Great Seal > Myth > National Treasure
National Treasure's Use of the Great Seal
Although it's the main marketing image for the film, the pyramid & eye
plays more of a background role in the plot where it appears a few times.
Grandfather tells young Ben the legend that Freemasons and Knights Templars gave us clues to their treasure using the symbols on the reverse side of the Great Seal. Later, in adult Ben's kitchen we see a poster of the dollar bill. (True. Someone is speaking to us. But it's the Founding Fathers communicating their vision of America.)
Spoiler Alert: At the film's climax beneath Trinity Church, Ben sees the all-seeing eye all the bad guys didn't see. On the floor below is a pyramid and eye button that opens the door to an empty treasure room where the first clue (Charlotte's pipe) becomes the key that unlocks the actual treasure trove.
With the fab treasure is the same pyramid & eye medallion seen at the beginning of the film when the Crusaders first find the treasure in Jerusalem. This medallion is a Hollywood prop.
Another significant fiction: Charles Carroll, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, is the Freemason who sets the treasure hunt in motion by giving the first clue ("Charlotte") to Ben's ancestor. But Charles Carroll was not a member of the Freemasons.
Fictional Medallion
The combination of an eye in the zenith of an unfinished pyramid did not exist as the symbol of any organization prior to 1782. It is an original American design approved by Congress on June 20th that year after Charles Thomson put together the final seal from ideas contributed by Pierre Du Simitière, Francis Hopkinson, and William Barton – the consultants and artists on the three preliminary design committees. These men were not Freemasons (not that there's anything wrong with that).
You don't have to be a Freemason to appreciate the elegant symbolism of the reverse side of the Great Seal. Intelligent people the world over understand the importance of the imagery, including Franklin D. Roosevelt and Henry A. Wallace, the men responsible for putting it on the one-dollar bill in 1935.
Although National Treasure reinforces masonic myths about the Great Seal (and highlights its association with money), the film itself is an entertaining manifestation of America's true national treasure, the creative genius of her people. It is great filmmaking: a huge technological, logistic, and artistic collaboration of several hundred talented professionals.
Here we go again. Another feds & robbers caper:
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Recognize myth and misinformation about the Eagle side
and the Pyramid & Eye side of the Great Seal.
